A vibrant place in the heart of the city, Canberra Museum and Gallery celebrates the region's social history and visual arts with dynamic exhibitions and unique community programs and events.

Housing a permanent collection, Reflecting Canberra, and a variety of local, national and international exhibitions, CMAG provides a refreshing insight to the integration of social history and the visual arts.

Reflections

Flash flood,
1997
oil on canvas
122 x 167.5 cm
Purchased 1998

Michael TAYLOR

born 1933

Michael Taylor was born in Sydney and studied at East
Sydney Technical College from 1949 to 1953, graduating
with a Diploma in Painting. He travelled in Asia in 1959 and,
after winning the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship
in 1960, spent three years in Europe. In 1972 Taylor settled in
the Canberra region, fi rst at Bredbo and then in 1995 in
Cooma. From 1974 to 1975 he travelled in the United
States, Europe and India.

Taylor is an important Australian artist whose work is held in the
collections of the National Gallery of Australia and major state
galleries, regional and corporate collections, and numerous
private collections. He established a reputation very early as an
expressionist painter of rare verve, and between 1964 and 1990
held thirty-fi ve solo exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne. Taylor
has been included in many signifi cant group exhibitions
including: Biennale des Jeunes (1963, Paris); Contemporary
Australian Paintings (1966, Los Angeles); Australian Art Today
(1969, touring South-East Asia); Ten Australians (1974-75,
touring Europe); and L’art contemporain Australien
(1991, Noumea). In 1979 he was a Creative Arts Fellow at the
Australian National University. In 2006 CMAG held an
exhibition of his collages, primarily produced between 1999
and 2005: Exhibition swing: Collages by Michael Taylor.
Taylor’s paintings are powerful yet lyrical; many are purely
abstract but many are evocations inspired by natural
phenomena that shape the movement and form of the work.

Flash flood is a fine example of the artist’s direct response to
the turbulence of nature, in this case the Murrumbidgee after
heavy rain. Taylor’s intimate observation of his environment
renders the fl ood as a swirling chaotic river of pigment alive
with the forces of nature and the debris thrown up by the flood,
including a dog desperately swimming against the tide. This
painting was included in The big river show: Murrumbidgee
Riverine exhibition held at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery from
October to December 2002.